"To the backbone, sister. Yet I am not one who would thrust my habits down other men's throats simply because the said habits happen to suit my soul. All religious methods are a matter of individual experiment. One man may feel more Christian if he drinks wine instead of water; if so--by all the prophets--let him have his wine. I hold doctrinal tyranny to be the greatest curse in Christendom." Igraine agreed with him like a sister. Soon the sun went down with a flood of gold over the trees, the little pool put off sheeny samite for black velvet, and the doves flew up to roost. The hermit in a genial mood went to his vesper meditations. Igraine saw him kneel down before the great stone with his scourge and crucifix beside him. She was still carnal enough to prefer the thin comfort of a pallet bed in the hermitage to stone or mother earth. When it had grown dark and very still she heard the swish of the steel scourge, and the man's mutterings mingled with the occasional baying of his dog. This phase of mind was, at her age, quite incomprehensible to her. She remembered to pray that night for the peasant's wife who had been sick in bed so long, and for the little lad who lay under the green grass. Then she went to sleep thinking of Pelleas. IX Radamanth the goldsmith had not wasted the hours since his niece had fled Winchester and his house in the dark. He was a man who did not let an enterprise slip into the limbo of the past till he had attempted honestly, and dishonestly, for that matter, to bring it to a successful issue. He had set his heart on getting Igraine married to one of the first lords in the island, and he also had skew ideas as to brimming up his own coffers. Taking it for granted that Lilith and the girl had not been close friends for weeks together without sharing secrets, and being also strongly of the opinion that Igraine's perversity arose out of some previous affair, he laid methodical siege to his daughter's confidences, and cast a parental dyke about her that should compel her to open every gate and alley to his scrutiny.